Category: community and culture
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Criticizing the Critics
I had concerns about the Chicago Sun-Times even before its most recent AI-related fiasco. The newspaper seems to have diminished in quality and quantity since I started subscribing. More recently, it seems to be moving away from the opinion business. This shift seems more than refraining from candidate endorsements as is reportedly required of nonprofits.…
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Reality TV and Me
I recently finished Emily Nussbaum’s (2024) second book — Cue the Sun! — for a book club. Others have considered this book to be an accessible account of the “fusion of authenticity and contrivance” in reality television (Stowell 2024) and the narrativizing and gamifying of its starts (Cunningham 2024). As such, this oral history both…
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A Little Privacy Please
My kids cannot understand what I’m sure they would consider my obsession with privacy. They technically didn’t grow up with cell phone, and got their first in middle school. Still, they’ve spent most of their lives with these devices, and the cultural changes created by these, and they insist upon the death of privacy. I…